Michael Berg To Run For Congress
Meet Cindy Sheehan's replacement as anti-war media darling:
I don't get this reaction from Berg. His son is killed in Iraq, so he reacts by calling on his countrymen to bring the troops home so we can hide behind our borders from the people who did the killing? This, to me, is like a parent having their child get killed by a murderer and then refusing to cooperate with the police to catch the criminal.
Yet this is the same thinking we see all over from the anti-war left. On 9/11 extremist Islam reached out and punched America in the nose. In response we invaded the region from which extremist Islam springs in order to end the oppression that creates terrorism and spread democracy. Yet the reaction from the anti-war crowd is to pull our troops home.
Do these people not understand that hiding behind our borders won't work? That simply invading and liberating Afghanistan would never have been enough to change things in the middle east for the better? That in order to keep ourselves safe from Islamic extremists we must take the fight to them rather than let them bring the fight home to us again?
I just don't get these people.
PHILADELPHIA (Reuters) - Almost two years after the videotaped beheading of U.S. contractor Nick Berg in Iraq, his father is running a third-party race for the U.S. Congress on a platform seeking a complete withdrawal of American troops.
Michael Berg, a veteran anti-war activist and retired schoolteacher who campaigns in jeans and a T-shirt, is the Green Party candidate for the Delaware seat of seven-term Republican Rep. Michael Castle (news, bio, voting record).
Berg, 61, acknowledges that his late entry into politics is a result of his son's grisly death at the hands of hooded captors in May 2004. The event brought the elder Berg worldwide media attention, especially after he publicly blamed U.S. President George W. Bush and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
"Other than stopping this war, I have no political ambitions," Berg said. "Let's face it, I would not be running if my son had not died in Iraq. People would not have known my name, and the Green Party would not have asked me to run."
His low-budget campaign comes as Democrats have enlisted Iraq war veterans in the battle for Congress this year in a challenge to Bush on Iraq. At least nine veterans of the Iraq war are running for Congress, all but one as Democrats.
Berg said he was more than a protest candidate with no serious prospect of unseating Castle, who won about 70 percent of the vote in 2004.
"I'm in this to win," Berg told Reuters in an interview.
I don't get this reaction from Berg. His son is killed in Iraq, so he reacts by calling on his countrymen to bring the troops home so we can hide behind our borders from the people who did the killing? This, to me, is like a parent having their child get killed by a murderer and then refusing to cooperate with the police to catch the criminal.
Yet this is the same thinking we see all over from the anti-war left. On 9/11 extremist Islam reached out and punched America in the nose. In response we invaded the region from which extremist Islam springs in order to end the oppression that creates terrorism and spread democracy. Yet the reaction from the anti-war crowd is to pull our troops home.
Do these people not understand that hiding behind our borders won't work? That simply invading and liberating Afghanistan would never have been enough to change things in the middle east for the better? That in order to keep ourselves safe from Islamic extremists we must take the fight to them rather than let them bring the fight home to us again?
I just don't get these people.
Justin B.
likwidshoe
Lestat
Ken McCracken
robert108
